Just read the first few posts to my blog… maybe it’s reread the first entries from September 2006. That story of getting started in surfing how many years ago? So what am I doing right now?

Thinking about what the surf will be like tomorrow and the next few days. You see off Baja there’s a Hurricane right now in the SoCal window sending surf our way that most likely…. According to forecasts, will start filling in late today into the night.  Which means tomorrow there’s going to be surf. That makes the next question, what will it be like?

Well, we won’t know until tomorrow… dah. But that doesn’t stop us from dreaming about what could be. And reminiscing on what the last swell was like or any other summer swell for that matter. I don’t recollect any real memorable swells last summer. The one day I do remember from last summer was a not swell. A not swell is surf that just shows up unannounced.

Because we have forecasting these days, we’ve got people that spend their time looking at weather around the globe to see where the ocean storms are and calculating if any waves will be generated that would move in a favorable direction to the shore of wherever you want to surf or do surf regularly. The forecasters don’t always get it right. Sometimes the forecast is off by a day or two. Let’s say the swell shows up a little before or there is an unexpected pulse after there’s been some surf. So, when the forecast is off, or something is missed we can get a not swell.

Anyway, there was one morning last summer that the surf was supposed to be around waste high and had been for a day or two. But this one morning there were pretty consistent sets in the head high plus range, the condition where good too. And because there was no real announcement the crowd was nonexistent. That’s what made the day memorable. There was a small happy crew in the water, and I was one of them. The nice thing about living close to the ocean… sometimes you catch it! Nothing planned other than the typical surf check run seeing surf and going out.

So, a swell is on the way, and you think of other memorable swells with the ideas the coming swell will be memorable too. The other thing about forecasts is sometimes they call for a coming swell to be in the head high range. I guess you could say they are right if you see a head high wave every half hour, but the typical set has waste high waves. Then again maybe there were head high waves and consistent at that but, just not when you are in the water.

Yeah, you know when you’re talking to a friend and they say the surf was really fun in the head high plus range. And you say  “that’s an exaggeration I was there and it was about waste high and every so often maybe a head high wave would come through”. They say “What?” and ask what time you surfed, and of course you surfed in the morning and they surfed a little after noon. Which was when the tides and surf connected to dish out a bit of size and consistency that you didn’t get. Even the time of day can make a difference in surfing a new swell.

Here’s to looking forward to another new swell and the memories it may bring.

D.R.